Category Archives: Mindful selling

Since I started Barrett in January 1995, I have met thousands and thousands of salespeople and sales leaders and whilst I can tell you many stories about these encounters the one thing I can say is that the motivation driving the vast majority of these sales and service people, and sales leaders is the desire […]

When we interact and work with people (customers, colleagues, managers, friends, family, etc.) it is important to be able to interpret and understand where the other person is coming from – their perspective, especially if we want to continue interacting and working with them in a manner that is beneficial to both parties. Interpreting and […]

Late last year we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each sales trend in December. Over the year we will delve a little deeper into each sales trend. To kick off the New Year we will focus on the Sales Trend Empathy. This sales trend is seeing […]

Perception is reality. So what do your clients really think of you? Would you be happy with how they perceive you? Are they thinking any of the following when they think about you and your company?: ‘I’m so glad I’ve met you; my life/business is better off for knowing you.’or ‘Oh that guy (gal), yeh […]

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, salespeople had a clearly defined role. They called on prospective customers, asked a lot of questions in an attempt to understand their customer’s needs, and in many instances they inadvertently helped their customers crystalise their thinking and clarify their needs. At that time salespeople controlled the […]

‘Educate and Facilitate’ was voted by our readers as the fourth most important sales trend in Barrett’s 2012 Sales Trends Report. With the 21st Century ‘selling’ not being about features and benefits anymore what has taken its place? Effective selling is a journey from education to opportunity. To sell something we need to educate in […]

The United States has been responsible for many great innovations but not all have turned out the way the inventors, architects or innovators intended. One such miscalculation was the introduction of ‘commissioned-only’ salespeople. This initiative spawned negative effect on the reputation and results of salespeople worldwide and its stigma has remained ever since, commissioned or […]

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? […]

Many people, especially sales people, often share the mistaken belief that Negotiation forms part of every sale which is not true. We often hear ‘my people need to be able to negotiate’ when upon further inspection they first need to learn how to sell. The reason many rely so much on negotiating is that their […]

In December 2011 we published The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 and invited readers to vote on what they thought would be the most important trends in sales for this year. ‘It’s not WHAT you do but WHY & HOW you do it’ topped the rankings. It seems that having a Purpose, the WHY, which […]